The recent breaking news about the ‘memogate’ new developments has me torn in wanting to celebrate but then filled with incredible sadness and anger.
Why am I sad and angry?
Well for starters I am sad for my Iraqi friend ‘Diva’ resident of Baghdad. The last time I heard from her was May 9th. This was part of our last chat on instant messaging:
dianed101 : what, well tell me Diva
Diva: the last few days were heated conflict with my landlord and his family
Diva: today was my first day at a new job, it was going pretty well, but when I got back I found that mom was attacked by the guy’s oldest son
and my uncle got involved,the police interfered the bastard got out of the police station in an instant
dianed101: and now what
Diva: typical of the current situation in Iraq
dianed101: yes I gather that,
what do you do now
Diva: I’m trying to pick up some necessary stuff and move to my uncle’s house for a while
Diva: no not for the while,they too don’t have enough space there, I’m going to have to restrict myself to my most important personal items,
but if I’m well settled at this new job I can maintain a contact there
dianed101 : do you have computer there with access
and Diva I am sending you all my love and bunches of hugs
dianed101: yes at work will you have computer
Diva: yeah sure
Diva: thank you Diane
dianed101 : I love you Diva
Diva: there isn’t much of me left for somebody to love
dianed101 : Oh yes there is plenty
dianed101 : plenty, plenty, plenty
dianed101 : and I feel love going to you from your many friends around the world
Diva : looking at myself this evening I wouldn’t think so
dianed101 : well Diva, please take heart, there may be only up from now on, I am so hoping that your life starts on the upswing now
dianed101 : I know you don’t think so, but it can happen, things can change
Diva : well Diane I just needed to send a quick note to the person helping me with the scholarship at the embassy
dianed101 : yes hopefully, always keep the hope alive and I mean this Diva, I am counting on you to keep hope alive inside yourself
dianed101: Ok Diva
Diva : I neeed to get some stuff ready to take with me tomorrow after work
dianed101 : I understand
Diva : and then jump instantly to bed
dianed101 : contact me as soon as you have a chance, by and I love you remember that
Diva : I can’t feel my body…It’s been a crazily hard day
Diva : but I promise I’ll do my best
dianed101 : thank you dear Diva
Diva : to e-mail tomorrow or even get online if time allows
dianed101 : ok by
Diva : talk to you later
Diva: take care
Diva (5/9/2005 10:13:11 AM): bye bye Diva
That was my last contact with my friend, May 9, 2005.
Where is she, is she still alive, is she in a hospital somewhere? None of this needed to happen. She did not need to live like this and go through this and face death everyday.
She has never missed this much time without contacting me, even if it’s just a line or to on instant chat, waiting for me when I woke up in the morning.
Yes I am, happy, sad and angry all at once.
Who is ready to start a really big push to get this president impeached, I am.
Like I said yesterday in pastordan’s WYFP diary about the suicide of militarytracy’s uncle, you would have to be crazy not to be angry and sad. And ANYTHING that might end this madness is welcome news. So I’m with you!!
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/6/3/81512/20949This is part one and if you are interested, see my info page for more Diva Diaries….
Oh Diane. I am SO sorry. You must be worried sick–it eats at you, doesn’t it? I don’t know what to say, but I’m sending you and Diva my strength and hoping that there’s a happy story to come out of all of this.
As to impeaching him, yes. We must.
Thanks Lorraine, but I should add that my worry is nothing compared to what people in Iraq must feel. I am just sick with that thought, all the thousands of lives lost, for what reason…..well we know the answer to that, oil and power and money.
Small comfort to Iraqi’s.
I think Bush and Blair will go down over this latest revelation, but will it be too little, too late?
I am also saddened for all the thousands of families who have lost their husband, wives, daughter and sons, for this man’s (Bush) melogomania.
For any that haven’t seen Rumsfeld’s War on Frontline, go to web page and you can see the video. They outlined perectly all that has been revealed recently, the preplanning, starting before Bush even took office, long before 9/11, etc.
I got chills reading your post. My emotions have roller coastered the last 24 hours – joy that Bush’s criminality is coming to light (and his plummeting ratings as a result) and deep sadness at what he, in the name of the USA, has perpetrated. Ah, I also need to throw in additional rage at a local target. I was scanning posts, came across one by “David Byron” bashing the woman’s movement. I tried to megatroll rate him, but might have screwed up and rated an innocent poster. What a mess I am. I swear to Goddess that almost all the crap that’s been going down since Nov is related to this president. I pray your friend is OK.
I am in the same boat on the roller coaster thing, and yes almost all of our current national and world problems are related to Bushco. That is why we have to impeach the bastard, has everyone signed an impeachment petition, just google impeachment and you will come up with a list of sites.
Thank you for your prayers on my friend’s behalf.
I signed one a couple weeks ago through KOS, as well as the Conyers petition. I’ll be out of school (teaching) in two weeks. I’m on the email list of an IB site and hopefully will be able to become more involved in the movement.
Diane, I’m not a pray-er, but I will keep your friend, and you, in my thoughts. I’m sorry for your worry and strain, and I’m sick at the thought of what she and other Iraqis are enduring.
It’s stories like this one that make me despair a little of my country. I just don’t understand how people can be so cavalier about the lives and well-being of others, how something as horrific as this war can be relegated to background noise in the lives of so many Americans. And I’m not perfect either — occasionally I find myself in the middle of some wholly ordinary activity, walking home from work or browsing the book store or washing dishes, and it dawns on me that while I am pursuing my normal, reasonably comfortable life people are being murdered and terrorized. For what? For greed, for ego, for the sociopathic gratification of this grotesque administration. And it’s being done in my name.
I’m beyond ready for impeachment. We owe it to the rest of the world, as well as ourselves, to get rid of this bunch of thugs.
I agree with every word you said. Sometimes as I’m goofing around with my sister about such trivia as melting summer makeup or laughing at my favorite Fawlty Towers episodes, I have an attack of guilt.
We all need to relax and recharge our batteries once in a while, so that we’ll be ready for the fight when it arrives.
I’ve issued a call to action for myself and the spouse, to do all we can to help the Democrats regain control of Congress, because that’s the only way we’ll even get a whiff of impeachment hearings. Since our area is strongly Democratic (though I’m disappointed in Eshoo), we’re going to try to closely monitor the California Central Valley.
I want Bush and his cronies impeached AND convicted AND drummed out of office. I want the name of Bush to be dragged so far into the mud that Jeb couldn’t even be elected Miami garbage inspector. I want the impeachment hearings to bring out the sordid details of all the Republican criminal doings that will make the Nixon administration look like a bastion of honesty. I want to stop hearing these phony patriotic slogans like “God Bless America”…God blesses the world, not just our little Ameri-centric piece of it.
Here endeth my rant…unless you want me to bitch about the spouse for a couple of hours, but that’s another story…
I want more than that. I want Bushco to be convicted of mass murder. I want him to go on TV and apologize without cue cards or wires to every American. I want part of his sentencing to require he crawl around the country and scrape off every damn “W” off every car on which it appears. I want his two Britneyesque daughters to be barred from every hot night spot in New York. I want Laura to dump him and for that to get more press than Jen and Brad. I want…
Whoa that was cleansing!
on the girls…in fact, I wish Jenna and Barbara all the best, hope that they come to terms with their potential for substance abuse, get help in an appropriate treatment environment…then find happiness with a couple of nice girls in the Castro and pop a wheelie in the Women’s Motorcycle Contingent (aka Dykes on Bikes) in a future SF Pride Parade… 😉
THAT would make Babs Senior’s hair turn white. Whoops.
I agree with all who want to see this man pay for what he has done. Corrupt Third world leaders of the past and present are starting to pale in comparison. Btw memo gate was just being reported on CNN headlines, I think it will be all over the news on Monday.
No punishment will be sufficient in my eyes for this man and this administration who stand behind him. Congress will have to pay for this too, for letting it get this bad and sitting around and saying oh we must follow our dear pres. who suffered so much after 9/11. Yeh, 9/11 was just his chance to be a cheerleader and rouse the nation to war.
Starts to cast more doubts on the whole 9/11, hum, did this fit in the plans to have just cause to go to war.
I think we need to revist 9/11 and take the tin foil hats off, because this is serious.
My sister, who at the time was more cynical than I, wondered about the timing of 9/11. I felt again, AT THE TIME, nobody could be so diabolical as to enable that tragedy to occur. I started to get a sick feeling in my gut re: who knew what and when, after Paul O’Neill.
http://www.freedomfiles.org/war/pentagon.htm
check out this file when you get a chance, Pentagon and 9/11.
Ididn’t want to believe it either, and then I started doing research for weeks, went all over the internet and came up with tons of data, I had so many links my cmuter couldn’t take it.
If you want to find out for yourself, do a google of everyones name in admin. and then put scandal…do that with 9/11 or anything and you will come up with tons of stuff you would not see otherwise.
Let’s talk about the Berg beheading, did you see diaries on that showing it may have been our own troops or forces committing that crime. Why, to justify further clamp downs and to get mr bush elected, ‘oh we gotta protect the country from these people’.
We need to revisit all of this stuff.
Bush makes Nixon look like a saint. The diss on Dems is circular firing squad. How about this for one fine fantasy: Repub Circular Firing Squad.
Thanks for the link — I’m going to check it out (though I may wait until this evening; it’s a little too early here for the stiff drink I think I may need for this one).
I resisted going down this road for a long time, but all the arguments I generated and all those I heard from others as to why the admin couldn’t be involved were gradually whittled down to one: No American administration could do something so hideous. And that’s no argument at all, especially in light of what we know this crowd is capable of, and have done. I came to realize awhile back that I do indeed think they were capable of this, but I suppose I haven’t quite had the stomach to look further into it — I don’t know, some days, what to do with my anger at these lunatics and their enablers, and it’s daunting to imagine adding to it.
But the alternative — deliberate ignorance — is too much like complicity.
Channel your energies and anger into getting an impeachment going, we need to organize and mobilize and get this train moving. I am prob. going to diary the subject soon, if someone does not beat me to it.
After Downing Street — they’re working on getting an actual resolution of inquiry going in Congress.
Some good stuff over there…
Good news, thanks and I am glad to hear that and will bookmark this page
John Bonifaz, a Boston attorney specializing in constitutional litigation, sent a memo to Congressman John Conyers of Michigan, the Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, urging him to introduce a Resolution of Inquiry directing the House Judiciary Committee to launch a formal investigation into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House to impeach President Bush.
Bonifaz’s memo, made available today at http://www.AfterDowningStreet.org, begins: “The recent release of the Downing Street Memo provides new and compelling evidence that the President of the United States has been actively engaged in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the United States Congress and the American people about the basis for going to war against Iraq. If true, such conduct constitutes a High Crime under Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution.”
In February and March 2003, John Bonifaz served as lead counsel for a coalition of United States soldiers, parents of U.S. soldiers, and Members of Congress (led by Representatives John Conyers, Jr. and Dennis Kucinich) in a federal lawsuit challenging President George W. Bush’s authority to wage war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war or equivalent action. Bonifaz is the author of Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush (NationBooks-NY, 2004, foreword by Rep. John Conyers, Jr.), which chronicles that case and its meaning for the United States Constitution.
One of the subjects Diva was writing about was soldier suicides in Iraq, which she says is a big problem over there. She has many cell phone and email soldier friends and they give her all the skivy on these things. I told her to be careful, because the us does not want that story to get out, and in view of the nefarious practices of this admin. she might just find herself and the soldiers on a target list.
Soldiers that she knows hate it there and hate what they are being made to do. Many of them are in contact with Iraqi citizens in just this way. Never meeting but just reaching out….never can meet, either could be killed.